This is a story about love and war. I've written
many a story, and a couple of books, about wars and rumors of wars, but
this is my first real love story. Like the war stories, it is something
I have lived.

When the book that I co-authored with my friend
and captain-in-battle, Lieutenant General (ret) Hal Moore, "We Were Soldiers
Once and Young," was turned into a movie last year, millions came to know
a great deal about the Battle of Landing Zone Xray in the Ia Drang Valley
in November 1965.

If they watched closely and followed the main
characters, they might have noticed a young Army Captain named Thomas C.
Metsker who was Moore's battalion intelligence officer. Tom was wounded
in the shoulder and ultimately ordered to board a Huey helicopter full
of other wounded Americans.

He took the last seat in the overloaded chopper,
then noticed a more severely wounded officer being carried toward the Huey.
Tom got out, gave his place to Captain Ray LeFebvre, and, as he stood in
the doorway, Tom Metsker was shot in the back by an enemy sniper. He fell
forward into the helicopter, and, as it took off, Tom's legs dangled out
of that bird. He was dead when that helicopter next touched ground.

Tom Metsker was a 1961 graduate of The Citadel,
a native of Indianapolis, and I met him three days before he was killed
when I marched with the 1st Battalion 7th U.S. Cavalry on a long, hot walk
through the tangled bamboo thickets east of Plei Me Special Forces Camp.

During that day and night with Colonel Moore's
battalion, I snapped a photograph of Moore's command group: the colonel,
Sergeant Major Basil L. Plumley, Captain Greg Dillon, radio operator Bob
Ouellette, Tom Metsker and a shotgun guard. It was the last photo taken
of Tom.

In the movie, the first person back home to
receive one of those terrible telegrams from the Army was Cathy LaPlante
Metsker, Tom's sweetheart, who wore a miniature Citadel ring engraved inside
with the words: "To My O.A.O." (One And Only).

There was someone else in that house who wasn't
shown in the movie. A baby girl, Karen Doranne Metsker, who was just 17
months old and would never know her father, but -- like every child who
has suffered such a loss in war -- would miss him forever.

Twenty-five years after these events, I wrote
a cover article for U.S. News & World Report on a battle America had
forgotten in a war it didn't really want to remember. It contained the
details of how Tom Metsker died, giving his seat and his life for a brother.

Cathy's brother Steve LaPlante read the article
and called his sister. She called her daughter. In no time at all Karen
was on the phone to me. The upshot was: Cathy and Karen and Tom's sister
Ibby Hall all came to a reunion of the Ia Drang band of brothers on Veterans
Day weekend, 1990.

The first night I stepped to the door of the
reunion hospitality suite and saw someone who had to be Karen, now married
and the mother of two little girls. She was tall and breathtakingly beautiful.
There was such anguish in her eyes that I couldn't face her. I turned and
walked out.

The next evening was the Ia Drang dinner, and
someone said, "You two have got to meet." Suddenly we were face to face.
Karen asked: "Why didn't you write this story 25 years ago?" We both burst
into tears. When I had collected myself, I responded to a question I had
asked myself a thousand times. "The truth is that 25 years ago I did not
have the skills to write that story, and if I had no one would have published
it."

The captain's daughter -- who inherited her
dad's eyes and his penchant for mischief -- and the reporter who had marched
with him, and unlike him had survived the battle, became good friends.

Seven and a half years ago, my wife died of
cancer. Karen became increasingly important in my life. Five years ago
this week, on October 24, 1998, Karen and I were married in the backyard
of General Sam Wilson's home on the campus of Hampden-Sydney College in
southern Virginia, under the spreading arms of an ancient Osage orange
tree. Tom Metsker's grandson, Lex, then 7, gave his mother away. His granddaughters,
Abigail, then 9, and Alison, then 11, were their mother's attendants.

Last fall, we established the Thomas C. Metsker
Leadership Education Endowment Fund at The Citadel. This spring the cadets
at The Citadel named their new football mascot, a bulldog puppy, "General
Tom Metsker."

Next month, the Ia Drang band of brothers --
Karen's honorary uncles and the kids' honorary granddads -- will come to
town as they always do this time of year. The families of others who died
in those terrible November days 38 years ago will join us in this annual
voyage of remembrance and healing.

Karen and the kids and I will go over to Arlington
National Cemetery where Tom Metsker rests, just downslope from the Tomb
of the Unknowns, and we will visit with him. So much was taken from us,
and yet so much was given.